Meme coins have officially entered the White House.
As widely expected, president-elect Donald Trump has appointed Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) and X boss Elon Musk to head up, alongside biotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, a new non-governmental body called the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’.
“Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal agencies,” Trump said of the appointments.
Keen-eyed readers will notice that the new department’s acronym is a homonym of the ticker symbol of blue-chip meme coin Dogecoin (DOGE).
Rather than a fluke, DOGE (the departmental one) is directly referential to the Shiba Inu-themed DOGE meme coin that Musk has long been an advocate for. So much so, that he occasionally goes by the ‘Dogefather’ moniker.
Musks’s endorsement of Dogecoin has historically catalysed the meme coin’s market value.
Similarly, the establishment of DOGE (the departmental one) under the stewardship of the Dogefather himself has set a rocket under Dogecoin’s price.
The DOGE/USD pair is currently up 128% week on week and 333% year to date. It is swapping for $0.39 per token and has a market capitalisation of nearly $57 billion.
Dogecoin's year-to-date performance – Credit: tradingview.com
As a meme coin, DOGE doesn’t have much in the way of real-world utility, but that has not stopped it from flipping Ripple (XRP), a crypto token that has been used to conduct decentralised, cross-border financial transactions for over a decade.
Bitcoin peaks
Bitcoin’s relentless rally following pro-crypto Trump’s successful election appears to have hit a peak for the time being.
After rocketing to an all-time high of $89,940 on Tuesday the BTC/USD pair has since pulled back below $88,000.
It still represents a remarkably strong position for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, which is currently up 27% week on week and more than 108% year to date.
Bitcoin’s current market capitalisation of $1.74 trillion is around the same as silver’s. Both are jostling for a spot as the eighth-largest asset globally- behind Saudi Aramco (TADAWUL:2222) but in front of Facebook (NASDAQ:META) parent Meta.
Trump has vowed to go easy on the crypto sector, regulation-wise. Evidently, the market is taking him at his word.